Business Gateway, unlike some of the other Lines of Businesses, is something that has never done before. Business compliance across the federal government is all in one place, and it is very unique.' Wendy Liberante

With 25 e-government initiatives and nine Lines of Businesses, theOffice of Management and Budget's efforts to improve howagencies deliver services have had their share of ups and downs.Between the ongoing debate on the Hill to secure funding for theprojects to the consistent effort to turn the proverbial culturalbattleship, OMB administrator for e-government and IT Karen Evans,associate administrator Tim Young and the staff of five portfoliomanagers continue to increase their expectations on the quality ofresults the projects produce.

GCN: What new developments are going on in theGovernment-to-Citizen portfolio?

Ciafardini: One of the things we have been working on is 18of our e-government initiatives have a performance measurementproject. That is very exciting because we are really focusing onmeasuring three specific areas: adoption, usage and customersatisfaction (see story, Page 36).

Customers don't just include citizens; a lot of timesagencies or states can be customers. A lot of times we track twometrics, one for agencies and their customer satisfaction, and asecond for the outward-facing part of the initiative that involvesthe service to the citizen.

GCN: What has been the challenge in getting the metricsdefined?

Ciafardini: The great thing is a lot of these agencies havealready been doing some of these things. All had some baselinemetrics, and it was just putting them into consistent categoriesand separating them out to a point where we can make them moreactionable. One of the great opportunities has been to share thedata and some of the data we received from the PerformanceAssessment Rating Tool process.

GCN: What is the status of the E-Authenticationproject?

Bales: Of the 24 agencies that comprise the CIO Council, 19have e-authentication-enabled applications. The remaining five arein the process of implementing e-authentication at one or morepublic-facing systems. We expect these implementations to becomplete by the end of the second quarter 2007 (see story, Page1).

GCN: What is the status of the Internal Efficiency andEffectiveness portfolio?

KOCH: One interesting part is because it is all internal andsupport systems ' these are not core missions or part oftheir programs. They sort of are distractions from their coremissions. So as agencies adopt them, it allows them to focusmanagement resources and attention on core mission.

There is a lot of activity. Some of [the e-governmentinitiatives], like Recruitment One-Stop, is pretty much done; it isin production and agencies are using it. E-Records managementinitiative owners completed their work, and agencies are buildingtheir own records management schedules.

Some of the others, Human Resources and Financial ManagementLOBs, are both very active and have been doing a great deal of workin enterprise architecture. They started out with 26 agencies thathad their own processes for hiring someone or getting a promotion,or raise or award. The HR LOB brought those agencies together andcame up with a process everyone agreed upon. That allowed us tocommoditize the HR systems. You know you can use any system thatcomplies to that architecture to meet your needs. Your requirementsdocuments now are standard HR requirements that are published andyou may have one or two small things on the side that you need. HRhas become very mature in those areas'they have a BusinessReference Model, Performance Reference Model that they worked withour enterprise architecture team with [OMB chief architect] DickBurk to develop and test, they have a data model, and a technicalmodel is coming out soon.

GCN: Is 2007 the year we will see more agencies move to ashared-services provider?

KOCH: The guidance on HR has been if an agency has a systemthat is working for them, then they should stay with it until theend of its lifecycle. If they have a system that needs to beupgraded, then let's get them into a service organization.The trend is, yes, there will be more agencies looking for HRservices. We have reached maturity with these enterprisearchitectures and agencies knowing what they are buying, and aregetting better at buying it.

GCN: Discuss the latest on the Government-to-Businessportfolio.

LIBERANTE: We did a great relaunch of BusinessGateway.gov inSeptember. The unique thing about Business Gateway, unlike some ofthe other lines of businesses, is this is something that has neverdone before. Business compliance across the federal government isall in one place, and it is very unique. It has received greatfeedback from the business world.

GCN: Will agencies begin to shut down duplicative systems in2007? E-Rulemaking is a perfect example of an e-government projectthat was supposed to replace redundant systems.

LIBERANTE: E-Rulemaking has made great strides last year.Right now, 100 percent of the rules are posted in the FederalRegister or posted online at Regulations.gov. The e-docket aspectsof E-Rulemaking, which is the agency side, just under 40 percent ofthe agencies are using it as a docket management system. We areadding close to three to four agencies a quarter to that and it isa matter of getting them trained and agencies are working out theirissues.

YOUNG: The question I get asked a lot about E-Rulemakingis specifically why, when agencies migrate to one system, are theynot shutting down the duplicative system. That is not the rightquestion. The right question is why have we not done this before.Why force citizens to go to over 20 different places to look forregulations and public comments, or go to a paper-based docket on MStreet SW [Washington] and look for this stuff?

The answers are all cultural in nature and not technical.Federal Docket Management System is more than a pilot project nowas over 30 agencies have been converted to it. The main benefit isnot the shutdown of duplicative regulatory systems, but it is ahuge burden reduction to citizens and improvement in thetransparency of government actions.

GCN: How many systems are still being used that areduplicative to E-Rulemaking?

LIBERANTE: Some agencies, like [the Health and HumanServices Department], have a legacy system and they are workingwith E-Rulemaking to figure out what the gaps are and how to bridgethem.

EVANS: The intent is if we follow this one, HHS wouldshut down their system. When we talk about e-government completionof these initiatives, completion is not just that we'veimplemented the system. But completion is when you shut down alegacy system. That is what we are holding the agencies accountablefor. We will not realize the cost savings and true benefit of whatwe have been trying to do here until they shut down legacysystems.

GCN: You used the example of HHS. Will the department beexpected or asked to shut down its old system once the gaps areaddressed?

EVANS: You said, ask, expected, all that'the answer isyes. The agency will say, 'It is in my best interest to getrid of this investment because I'm moving everything over tothe new system.' We really want to make good businessdecisions because the agency will see them [instead of just]investments. It will not be a matter of us saying you will have to.But the expectation is, and we will follow up on it, you have toeliminate redundancies.

GCN: Do you have any idea of how many redundant systems thereare?

YOUNG: We actually are working on that in the context of theagency's quarterly e-government PMA score. About a year and ahalf ago, we worked with every agency to develop comprehensiveplans with milestones and dates to implement all e-government andLOB initiatives.

GCN: What is the status of the Government-to-Governmentportfolio?

YOUNG: Grants.gov hit a major milestone that we have beenplanning for three years. The goal was 75 percent of grantopportunities would be available for online application. Theyexceeded that goal by 1 percent and hit 76 percent. In fiscal 2005,the goal was 25 percent. In 2007, the goal is 100 percent.

It went from a conversation about 'no we can't dothis because '' to a conversation of 'yes, wewill do it if '' and the condition of certain aspectof agency rules and policies put in place and goals from OMB beingestablished and a governance structure that takes into account whatevery agency does in grants management and [what] the citizen andhigher-education aspects are. This goal was not accomplishedbecause OMB said it will be done, but because it made sense, it wastransparent and there was a big benefit not just to agencies, butagencies' constituents.

Disaster Management implemented Disaster ManagementInteroperability Services at every emergency operations center offederal agencies. They have a tool to communicate in times ofdisaster or times of preparing for disaster. That all happenedbecause there was a sense of urgency, a clarity of goals and acommitment on behalf of the CIOs from all those agencies. The focusnow is on enhancing the current tool set to meet the evolving needsof the first responders.

EVANS: Disaster Management is totally included inDHS' appropriations. It has a self-sustaining model from ourperspective because it has a business owner, it has appropriateddollars and its future is set. But because it is also withinDHS' appropriations there are things when we talk aboutshutting down duplication and all these other types of activities,the CIO at DHS has to look at his portfolio overall and say this isa business line we provide, disaster management, how are we doingit? It keeps getting reported that we are shutting down disastermanagement and it is going away. This one is so mature, it isgetting ready to go to version 2. The agency owns it and looks athow we can deliver service across the board across all ourcomponents.

GCN: DHS CIO Scott Charbo is not unfunding disastermanagement, then?

EVANS: He is improving the services of disaster management,the business line within DHS. The presidential initiatives when wefirst started were proofs of concepts that we could do these. Scottis looking at what the business of DHS is and what tools we areusing to support it.

GCN: Describe some of the biggest accomplishments anddisappointments of the e-government and LOB projects that occurredin 2006.

CIAFARDINI: GovBenefits.gov continues to provide outstandingbenefits information to millions of citizens, and USA Servicescontinues to lead the way in helping federal agencies servecitizens by utilizing cost-effective call centers and informationservices such as FirstGov.gov.

Due to a contract protest, development and deployment of theNational Recreation Reservation Service under Recreation One-Stophas been delayed. However, in 2007, the initiative plans to launchNRRS'the consolidated recreation reservation system.

KOCH: The Department of Labor, one of the first agenciesto complete its E-Travel implementation, reported that their costper travel voucher decreased from $62.59 to $24.75 (more than 60percent) and voucher processing time decreased from seven to threebusiness days. Agencies migrating to one of the four E-Payrollproviders saw a nearly 30 percent reduction in average cost per W-2in 2006 ($176 to $126). Currently, 86 percent of federal employeesare serviced by one of the E-Payroll pro- viders. All agencies thatare not currently using an E-Payroll provider are scheduled tomigrate in 2007.

LIBERANTE: There are more than 25,250 Federal Registerdocuments posted on Regulations.gov that are available for publiccomments and over 300,000 documents (supporting material, noticesetc.) available on the site. Beginning in September 2005, agenciesbegan adopting the Federal Docket Management System as their docketmanagement tool. While funding restrictions delayed implementationof FDMS, there are currently 13 agencies that have fullyimplemented FDMS and new agencies continue to implement at a rateof three to four agencies per quarter. FDMS currently logs morethan 2,300 agency staff as registered users.

BALES: The U.S. E-Authentication Identity Federationmembership more than doubled in size during the past year. Wecurrently have 32 relying parties operational in the federationwith three more expected to go live this month.

GCN: How has your communications strategy with the Hillchanged over the past year? How will it be different with theDemocrats in charge? Will obtaining funding for e-government beeasier now?

YOUNG: We will continue our efforts to work with agenciesand their congressional stakeholders to clearly define e-governmentbenefits to agencies and citizens. It is our job to activelycommunicate these benefits to lawmakers and their staff. We willcontinue to strive for the same goals because we believee-government is good government.